Smoke and Memories
by narrizan
Summary: Sometimes Sanzo and Gojyo are more alike than they would care to ever admit. I think. Non Slash.


Disclaimer: "Gensomaden Saiyuki, Saiyuki: Reload, Saiyuki: Gaiden" and all of its characters were created by Kazuya Minekura. They belong to her and are used without prior permission. No monetary profit is made through this story.

Smoke and Memories _by Zan_

The air was still and the humidity clung to him in drying sweat like a second skin. He hated nights like this where there was no rain to blame the sleeplessness on. He supposed he could say the brightness of the moon was keeping him awake. It was Hakkai's fault, damn him! Talking about what he would say if he ever had a chance to meet himself in a time past. Hnh! No guesses as to what Hakkai was referring to there. Although thinking about it, really it probably was not at all that obvious, whom he was going to give the biggest ticking off to. Wondering what brought it on, Sanzo snorted. He would not have anything to say to himself at any age. There really was not any point in it. Regrets was not one of the things he mulled over, and on this god-forsaken journey definitely not something he would want to toy with. It would just screw him up inside. Like he was not screwed up enough already. And, 'Yeah', that was funny, 'God-forsaken'. It was the triumvirate of floating heads that had sent him on this chase in the first place,though Sanzo doubtedthat they would get much help of the divine kind. The journey was changing them all, but essentially, they were still the same as when they had started. The core of who they were. That was reassuring in an odd way. Growling softly to himself, Sanzo pulled his jeans on, grabbed the cigarettes off the bedside table and stalked off out into the midnight air. Maybe a smoke would clear and calm his mind a little.

Now that he was outside he let out an audible sigh,exhaling a breath he had not realised he had been holding. He guessed he was probably more tense than he thought. The inn where they were at was really a small house with a veranda. Just outside this somewhere village on another road heading West. Sparsely furnished and the kitchen served only simple food, but at least it was clean and it was a roof over their heads. Small mercies to be grateful for, he supposed. He settled himself on the front steps, put a cigarette to his lips and fumbled about for a light. Before he could even curse, a light was there for him.

"What's this? Our exalted leader can't sleep?"

"Can't I get some damn peace and quiet around here?" Damn the Kappa. He was thankful for the light, but it was not as if he needed to say anything.

"Save it okay! It's too hot to argue alright." Gojyo sat leaning against the wall at the bottom of the steps. "I couldn't sleep either."

"He puzzles me still after all this time."

"Who does? Hakkai?" Sanzo looked askance.

"He sleeps, but doesn't. There's a shadow, it hangs above him. Feels almost solid sometimes I want to just touch it and see what's in it." Gojyo sighed. "Perhaps I should and then maybe he can sleep a little easier."

"It's his, so let him get rid of it himself" Sanzo's timbre came across almost civil.

"Sanzo…?"

"No dumbass questions, Dumbass!" Sanzo grouched. "Now let me, smoke in peace or I'll shoot you!"

So, there were two of them sat in silence with their own thoughts. The night air slowly filled with the scent of two brands of tobacco. The stillness did not dissipate the haze and it hung there about them, as much as the imagined one hanging above the sleeping Hakkai.

_xxxxxx_

Through the cloud Sanzo imagined seeing himself and wondered what he would say to the seven year old perpetually sweeping the fallen leaves beneath the peach trees on the temple grounds.

"Oy, boy" because 'Kouryuu' would sound strange coming from him. "Mrrhm" Sanzo could not believe he was giving in to Hakkai's musings.

"What?" Disdainfully polite would be the answer.

"Why do you do that?"

"Well, because the old fogeys asked me to, because it gives me something to do and keeps me from trouble." When he would probably be thinking, '_What's it to you?_' The term 'dumbass' didn't come into his vocabulary till much later.

"Who do you do it for?" Sanzo knew the answer, but he would ask it anyway.

"Master" the 'stupid question' would go unvoiced of course.

Yes, life was simple then. There was only Koumyou and Kouryuu. Never mind anybody else. No one else really mattered and certainly not what they thought.

_xxxxxx xxxxxx_

Gojyo looked up at the moon, waxing full. Odd and yet not that he was sharing civil space with Sanzo. The brightness of the moon was a strange yellow-orange tinge or something. He saw in it the frightened rabbit all of seven years old huddling in a corner, looking as if he could wish himself away. Holding back tears, from the pain of cuts and bruises that could not hurt. Anymore. Still, he crouched down and held out a hand to him.

"Hey"

"Hey yourself," snuffily.

"You alright?"

"What's it to you?" Guarded and stiff.

"Nothing just wondering. Why are you doing this?"

"Jien says I have to keep quiet. I must try to stay quiet and out of trouble." '_What else can I do_' remains unsaid and hung in the air.

"Who do you stay for?" Gojyo would ask even if he knows the answer. It would always be the same answer he reckoned.

"For her." Softly but sure. Unwavering.

Hakkai was SO dead for opening this can of worms.

_XXXXXX_

Sanzo exhaled another lungful of smoke, Koumyou would at least be thankful that his pupil did not pick up the smoking habit from him. He glanced over to Gojyo who was staring up at the moon. Sanzo thought for a moment that the redhead looked lost, and in the same breath of time thought 'idiot' too.

"Tch!" Sanzo took another drag.

_xxxxxx_

Digging further into his memories. Further, not in time but deeper into his soul. Self-torture like this was good for the soul. Well, he could tell himself that and there was no rain to blame it upon. Well perhaps digging was the wrong term for it. It meant remembrances, which were buried. Just as Goku's lost ones were. No. This one was always there simmering just under the surface. It was there to say goodnight to him often. In whatever weather.

"Master I can't move. Please release me."

"You should have been stronger." He pleaded with the ghosts of the past. Whether it was directed just to the boy or _HIS_ Sanzo or both. The Sanzo now could not be sure.

"Please stop," the newly made Sanzoin turn pleaded with the ghost of today and tomorrow. With anybody who would hear, but already, no one was there.

"Well, you'll have to get stronger now." As Sanzo thought back to an overheard conversation between Hakkai and Goku.

"Hn! As do you." Was the imagined retort asone, theylooked at the pooling blood on the floor.

_xxxxxx xxxxxx_

"Tch!" Gojyo heard from Sanzo. However, was too lost in own his yesterdays to comment on it. Maybe later.

What Gojyo does see is a boy, enforced in growth to a not quite man, back against the wall and facing Death. Death with red-rimmed eyes still dripping tears-not-blood and crying out. For help. A beauty, even the delirium could not hide that.

"You should have been stronger, for Her." Gojyo says softly.

"Please make her stop," the boyasked the Man he is now or anyone, who could have heard then. But, there is no one. Gojyo knows what comes next for it is something that he sees all the time, over and over in his head. Like a favourite song that he would hum over and over. However, this is no song. Gojyo tries not to sing this tune too often, and definitely not aloud. For Hakkai would worry and Goku would wonder at the secrets Gojyo was keeping from him.

"You'll have to find your strength now,"

"Where will I find the strength, Jien is gone." The boy wonders forlornly as he looked at the pooling blood on the floor.

"You will." Gojyo knew this.

_xxxxxx_

"Yeah I would have said 'NO' to the Three Almighty Floating heads. 'No' to looking for some crazy, fuckwit murderer." Sanzo said to the twenty-year old priest.

"Yeah, well you would." Would the indignant reply be? "I'm glad I brought Goku with me."

That came out of nowhere. Sanzo was surprised.

"Why?" asked the present Sanzo.

"Don't know. You learn from him. I think"

Sanzo nodded, "Yes because watching children grow teaches you things you may have forgotten."

"It was still a half assed mission from the start." Sanzo said to the younger man.

"Yes much like this one." Sigh.

_xxxxxx xxxxxx_

Gojyo snapped out of his reverie at Sanzo's sigh. When he saw the blond was still smoking, albeit a little furiously, Gojyo thought it would be alright to stop up a little longer. After all, if he did not wake up the next day, he could say that Sanzo kept him awake. Even if Hakkai would not go for it, and certainly not his partner in crime. Ah well.

As always, close along the heels of thinking of Hakkai, was always the little thought, "You could have left him there."

"You could not, even if you tried," a younger redhead three years from that moment said to him.

"Yeah that smile that said he wanted to die. But you're just selfish," Gojyo-now spoke to yesteryears' persona.

"Jien tried to save me by killing mother. But I think he needed saving as much as I."

"Uh, don't tell Blondie. But, he saved all of us. He would hate to know that's what I think."

The two of them chuckled at that.

_XXXXXX_

"What's so funny?" Sanzo asked Gojyo.

"Nothing."

"Suit yourself."

"Well I'll say goodnight now."

"Whatever." Sanzo stood up and flicked the spent cigarette into night, to join several others already there.

In the still air and heavy humidity, the smoky haze hung and dissipated until even the spectres of all their yesterdays were, just that. Phantoms and incorporeal embodiments of the mind made of memories and the past. What they were driving towards, they did not know. They were there for themselves and it did not really matter any more what anyone else thought.

The next day when the sun was high, outside a house-turned-inn near a somewhere village on a road West, the only evidence that some travellers had passed by were a pile of stubbed out cigarettes and faint tire tracks.

_Fin_


End file.
